The Senior Race is the traditional closing race of the TT, the last race over the Mountain Course on the Friday afternoon of race week. After a fairly relaxing day off on Thursday, we were back on it this mornng - the crew (Alex, Simon and Keith) were up at six and in the paddock at 8am, and I drove over from Ramsey with my dad not long after.

The main race of the day for us was the Lightweight, for 650 twins, as this was the one I had the best chance of any sort of result in. The first 20 riders in the programme are seeded, and start in that order - everyone else is in qualifying time order. Wednesdays practice time (see here) didn't count for this, so I was to start in 27th place, which was quite a bit further up the grid than the other races. The race start had been brought forward 30 minutes to 10:15, which was a bit of a surprise, but we were all ready to roll. As we lined up on Glencrutchery Road, it was another beautiful hot and sunny day on the Isle of Man - surely the best race week weather I've ever seen. I paddled forward, got to the front of the queue, waited for the flick of the Manx flag, and once again was away down Bray Hill.

I knew the trick was going to be getting up to speed quickly on my first lap - while I'd done 109mph on Wednesday afternoon, that was after 4 laps of the 600 race, so I 'had my eye in', so to speak. But I felt pretty good as I headed round the course, and was encouraged to see other bikes ahead of me, meaning I was making ground on earlier starters. I think I passed three people on the first lap, but I also got passed by Maria Costello, who had started 10 seconds behind me.

The preferred strategy for a three lap race is to pit at the end of lap 1, which I did, along with most of the field. As always, the crew handled this impeccably, and I soon away on lap two. I caught Maria again and got past, and hoped I might be able to get the 10 seconds start difference back from her, but she was having none of it, and came back at me again. In fact, the last two laps were a great battle, back and forth, and speaking to her afterwards, she was having as much fun as I was. It almost went wrong at the end of Sulby Straight, when after draughting past her I ran out of brakes for Sulby Bridge, and had to use the run off while Maria swept away to Ginger Hall, no doubt laughing in her crash helmet. But I only lost a few seconds, and got my head down over the bumps to Ramsey, and made most of it back up as we started the climb over the mountain for the last time. By now I knew Maria was going to beat me, as there was no way I could make up 10 seconds in the last 12~13 miles, but I still wanted to finish ahead, and managed a pass over the top. But Maria wanted to finish ahead too, and was right alongside as we took the chequered flag. The results sheet says she was ahead of me by 6/1000ths of a second at the line! Plus, of course, the 10 seconds that she made up after starting behind me.

I had a couple of targets for this race - to do a 110mph lap, to get a replica (bronze for finishing within 110% of the race winner's time, silver for 105%), and to maybe get into the top 15 (for which there is prize money!). Well, I managed the 110mph lap on the last lap, and got a bronze replica too, but only managed 17th place. It's the nature of racing that you always want to do better, but I'm very happy with this result. If it hadn't been for the exceptional pace at the front of the field (4mph fastet than practice!), the bronze replica might have been a silver, but I certainly can't complain about that.

There was only around 90 minutes from finishing the Lightweight race to the start of the Senior, in which time I had to rehydrate, eat something, clean my visor and fit new tear-offs, and generally get prepared. All of which was managed, and the race was started and I was about 4 or 5 back from the start gate when there was a delay, and we were told that the race had been red-flagged. There had been a big incident at the bottom of Bray Hill, with a bike crashing into the crowd and injuring multiple spectators. 80% of the field was out on the course, so in a way I was lucky not to have started, and we could just put the bike bacl in Parc Ferme.

There was an extensive delay - 11 spectators were taken to hospital, although thankfully none of their injuries were life threatening; also, the rider was perfectly ok. But the police needed to record the scene, and clear the carnage up, and all the bikes round the course had to be brought back to the paddock, and then re-fueled and fitted with fresh tyres (for the top teams), etc. There was even a question mark over whether, with 11 new arrivals at A&E, Nobles hospital had the capacity to cope with any other casualities that might result during the race. But eventually it was announced that the race would restart, for the the full six laps, at 4:30pm, so we went through the whole start process again, and this time the race got away cleanly.

For this, the last race of the week, my aim was to just enjoy myself, relax a bit and see if a bit more speed came from not trying too hard. I'd found in the Lightweight race that I could carry a lot more corner speed through a lot of corners than I had realised, in a higher gear than I had initially tried, and I hoped a similar 'more haste, less speed' approach might work well on the 1000, as well as being less physically demanding. So with this in mind, I covered the initial laps to Ballacraine, and was pleased to see another bike in the distance - perhaps it was working? In fact it was, as my opening lap was the fastest of the whole fortnight, but also the rider in front of me, Paul Duckett, was having an erratic start to his Senior race. I caught him eventually, diving underneath at School House corner on the way into Ramsey, but he came back past me on the start/finish (I must be really rubbish ou of Govenors Dip, as I've been passed a lot on the start straight....). So I chased him again, getting back past att he 13th where he was inexplicably slow on the exit towards Kirkmichael. This was job done, I thought, and headed round and across the mountain to my first pit stop. But then on lap three Ducky came past again, and this time just cleared off into the distance. Speaking to him later, he told me he'd "been asleep" for the first two laps.

While I wasn't finding riding the ZX10R as tiring as I had in the opening race , it was still pretty physical. Right at the end of lap three the two leaders on the roads, John McGuiness and James Hillier, came past me at Govenors Dip, but then immediately headed into their 4th lap pit-stop. This was sort of expected - they started over 10 minutes ahead of me, and were lapping more than 2 laps a minute faster. Of course, at that pace they quickly made up the 45~60 seconds that spent in the pits, and came past me again about half-way round the course. Now I was aware of being caught by the front guys, of course, made obvious by pit boards being made ready in hedges, and the TV helicopters in the air. But only a couple more actually came past on my fifth lap, and then once I'd started the sixth I knew the fast boys would all be finished. I was relieved to be on my last lap, and knew that I was slowing down, but it's easy to make a fatal mistake in these circumstances, so tried hard to keep my concentration up. It was enormously gratifying that all around the circuit, despite being the last bike on the roads, hundreds and hundreds of people in the crowd waved as a I passed them.

As I came down the mountain to Douglas, I knew I was going to finish my final TT race, and the most prestigious, the Senior TT. I took the chequered flag and gratefully pulled off the road onto the pit return lane. Again, 100s of people clapped and cheered me - what a feeling! Simon was waiting to take the bike from me, and Keith had to help me remove my gloves before I could get my helmet off - I was done in.

My fastest lap was the opening one - 19:23.822, which is 116.709mph - which is my fastest ever round the TT course. And my total race time was under 2 hours, which was also very pleasing. There were around 67 starters and I finished 47th out of 50 finishers. Very much at the back of the field, but as everyone says, finishing a Senior TT is achievement enough.

This entry was posted on Jun 08 2013 at 10:19 by admin and is filed under TT2013.

Thanks for your great write-ups, Champ, sounds like you’ve had a fantastic fortnight.

If there’s ever a job going in your crew for a man who doesn’t know the Island, rides like a granny, can’t wield a spanner without having somebody’s eye out and can even muck up waving a flag then do let me know :)